At close, we saw 17 people step up and place remarkable markers. Today, we will recap the game and let you know who the overall winner from this week of game play in Vegas just happened to be.

This is about some bets, so we needed to understand some of the hands that might have won, right?

Let’s see the hands dealt to each of our players this past week.

Andy Galbraith (b|t) shared a full house of risk this month when talking about backups. Do you have a backup if you haven’t tested it.

“without regular test restores, your backups do not provide much of a guarantee of recoverability. (Even successful test restores don’t 100% guarantee recoverability, but it’s much closer to 100%).”

Boris Hristov (b|t) thought he was feeling lucky. He couldn’t imagine things getting worse. He even kept reminding himself that it couldn’t get worse. He was dealt a hand and it was pretty good – and then everything just flushed down the drain.

A disaster with replication and with the storage system – ouch!

Chris Yates (b|t) wanted to push his hand a little further than Andy this week. Chris went all-in on his backups. At least he went all-in early in his career.

The gamble you ask? Chris didn’t test the backups until after he learned an important lesson.

“I’ve always been taught to work hard and hone your skill set; for me backups fall right into that line of thinking. Always keep improving, learn from your mistakes.”

Doug Purnell (b|t) shares another risky move to make. In this hand, Doug thought he could parlay maintenance plans into an enterprise level backup solution.

What Doug learned is that maintenance plans don’t offer a checksum for your backups. After learning that, he decided to stay and get things straight.

Jason Brimhall (b|t) took a different approach. I took the approach of how these career gambles may or may not impact home, family, health, and career in general.

There is a life balance to be sought and gained. It shouldn’t be all about work all the time. And if work is causing health problems, then it is time for a change.

It’s important to have good health and enjoy life away from work.

Jeffrey Verheul (b|t) had multiple hands that many of us have probably seen. I’d bet we would even be able to easily relate.

In the end, what stuck with me was how more than once we saw Jeffrey up the ante with a story of somebody who was not playing with a full deck. If you don’t have a full deck, sometimes the best hand is not a very good one overall.

Joey D’Antoni (b|t) had a nightmare experience that he shared. We have all seen too many employers like what he described.

The short of it is summed up really will by Joey.

“The moral of this story, is to think about your life ahead of your firms. The job market is great for data pros—if you are unhappy, leave.”

K. Brian Kelley (b|t) brought us the first four of a kind. Not only did he risk life and limb with SQL 7, but he tried to do it over a WAN link that was out of his control.

When he bets, he bets BIG! DTS failures, WAN failures, SQL 7, SQL 2000, low bandwidth and somebody playing with the nobs and shutting down the WAN links while laughing devishly at the frustration they were causing.

Kenneth Fisher (b) thought he would try to one-up Jeffery by getting employers that would not play with a full deck either.

From one POS time tracking system to another POS time tracking system to yet another. Apparently, time tracking was doomed to failure and isn’t really that important.

That seems to be a lot of hefty wagers somebody is willing to lay down.

Matt Velic (b|t) brought his A-game. He was in a no prisoner kind of mood.

Matt decided he was going to real you in, divert your attention, and then lay down the wood hard. Don’t try to get anything past Matt – especially if it wreaks of shifty and illegal.

The way he parlayed his wagers this month was a riot.

Mickey Stuewe (b|t) was the only person willing to Double-down and to even try to place a bet on snake-eyes. With the two-pronged attack at doubles, she was able to come up with two pairs.

To compound her doubles kind of wagers, she was laying down markers on functions. Check out her casino wizardry with her display of code and execution plans.

Rob Farley (b|t) was a victim of his own early success. He had a lucky run and then it seemed to peter out a bit. In the end he was able to manage an Azure high hand

Rob reminds us of some very important things with his post. You can get lucky every now and again and be successful without a whole lot of foresight. Be careful and try to plan and test for the what-if moment.

Robert Pearl (b|t) rolled the dice in this card game. He was hoping for a pair of kings with his pair of clusters and the planned but unplanned upgrade.

There is nothing like a last minute decision to upgrade an “active-active” cluster. In the end Bobby Tables had an Ace up his sleeve and was able to pull it out for this sweet pair.

Russ Thomas (b|t) ever have the business buy some software and then thrust it on IT to have it installed last minute?

That is almost what happened in this story that had some interesting yet eventual results.

Russ weaves the story very well, but take your eye of the game at hand!!

Sebastian Meine (b|t) brought needles to the table. That is wicked crazy and leaves quite the impression.

Maybe he thought he was going to inject some cards into the game to improve his hand. I was almost certain he had nothing going, but magically he was able to produce some favorable data.

Oh, that was the point of his post! Have a weakness? It will be found, injected and exploited.

Steve Jones (b|t) had a crazy house going. Imagine 2000 or so people all trying to help you make your bets and play your hand. That is a FULL house.

Of course, his full house was more to deal with a misunderstood risk with the application and causing performance problems in the database.

In the end, they fixed it and it started working better. A little testing would have gone a long way on this one!

Wayne Sheffield (b|t) in perhaps the most disappointing and surprising turn of events, Wayne ended up with a hand that could have won but he folded.

Well, Wayne didn’t fold but there were some bets that resulted in people folding and maybe worse in the story that Wayne shares. This can happen when you are betting on something you know nothing about and really should get somebody to help make the correct bets for you.

And to recap, the overall winner was…

…

…

…

…

the HOUSE. With a winning hand of a royal flush.

Thanks to all of the SQLFamily for participating this month. There were some really great experiences shared. The posts were great and it was a lot of fun. I hope you got as much enjoyment out of the topic and articles this month as I did.

Abstract

Managing concurrency is one of the most challenging aspects of working with any enterprise DBMS. There is much confusion out there about locking, blocking, and deadlocks. In this demo heavy session we will clear up the confusion.

BIO

Randy Knight, MCM, is an IT professional who has worked with Microsoft technology for over 20 years, focusing on SQL Server for the last 16. He has worked in a variety of settings, including 6 years as a Database Architect for Match.com, one of the largest and most successful dot-coms. He is currently the President and Principal Consultant for SQL Server Solutions Group LLC, a Utah-based SQL Server consultancy.

Since announcing the topic last week for T-SQL Tuesday, I have thought about many different possibilities for my post. All of them would have been really good examples. The problem has not been the quality but in the end just settling on my wager for this hand.

You see, this month T-SQL Tuesday has the theme of risks, betting on a technology, solution or person, or flatly having had an opportunity and not taken it (that’s a bet too in a sense). Sometimes we have to play it safe, and sometimes we have to take some degree of risk.

If you are interested, the invite for T-SQL Tuesday is here and the deadline for submission is not until Midnight GMT on 12 February.

It’s a Crapshoot

When all the dice finally settled, I decided it would be best for me to talk about some recent experiences in this Past Post.

First a little dribble with the back story. Just don’t lose your focus on the price with this PK*. Readers, please don’t Press and be patient during this monologue.

Over the past year I have been pushing hard with work and SQL. I was working for a firm as a part of their remote DBA services offering. As time progressed and I became more and more tenured with the firm, I found that I was working harder and harder. Not that the work was hard, but that there was a lot of it.

Stress rose higher and higher (I must have been oblivious to it). At one point I started getting frequent migraines. I went to the doctor to try and figure things out. I visited the chiropractor to try and figure things out. The chiropractor proved to be useful and had some profound advice. He asked me how many hours I would sit in front of the computer on a daily basis (since that was my job). My reply to him shocked him pretty good. I was putting in regular 20 hour days.

Having weekly chiropractor sessions helped somewhat with the migraines but it was not nearly enough. I figured I would just have to deal with it since we couldn’t figure out what the root cause was (yeah we were trying to perf tune this DBA).

In addition to the chiropractor and traditional medicine to fight migraines, I also tried some homeopathic remedies. Again, similar results. It seemed to help but wasn’t an overall solution and not a consistent solution.

Later in the year I found something that seemed to help a little with the migraines too. I started using Gunnars. Sitting in front of a computer for 20 hours a day on most days, it made sense there might be some eye strain. Wearing the Gunnars, I immediately felt less eye strain. That was awesome. Too bad it did not reduce the migraines.

After more than a year of having regular migraines, I found that the migraines started occurring more regularly (yes there was a baseline). Near the end of 2013, I found that there was a period that I had eight straight migraine days. These migraines typically lasted the duration of the day and there wasn’t much I could do outside of just dealing with it and making sure work got done.

Notice the risk? What are all of the risks that might be involved at this point? Yes, I was risking my health, family and work.

Russian Roulette

Near the end of the year 2013, I made a very risky decision. I decided to part ways with the firm and pursue a consulting career. This was as scary as could possibly be. I was choosing to leave a “Safe” job knowing that I had a job and secured income – so long as the company did well.

Not only was I choosing to gamble with the job change and risking whether or not I would have work flowing in to keep me busy, I was also risking the well-being of my family. With a family, there is the added risk of ensuring you provide for them. This was a huge gamble for me. Not to mention the concern with the migraines and whether I would be able to work this day or that based on the frequency and history of these things.

In this case, the bet on Green came up GREEN! Over two months into this decision I have yet to have a migraine. For my health this was the right decision. I have also been lucky enough to be able to get myself into the right consulting opportunity at the right time with the right people. Because of that, we have been able to keep me busy the whole time.

With all of that said, thanks to Randy Knight (@randy_knight) for bringing me in as a Principal Consultant at SQL Solutions Group. With the change to consulting, Randy has helped to keep my hours down to less than 20 hours a day.

The thing about those 20 hour days is there were several people trying to get me to back off. They’d say things like “leave it for tomorrow” or “the work will still be there.” That may be true, but the firms clients had certain expectations. Learning when to back off and keep the foot on the gas pedal is something everybody needs to learn. For me, I felt I had to do it because it was promised to the client. Now as a consultant, I feel I can better control when those deliverables are due. Thanks to Wayne (@DBAWayne) for continuing to point this out as a symptom of “burnout.”

In the end, it took making a risky change to avoid the burnout and get my health back under control.

*PK in this case is a term for a pick ’em bet and not in reference to a Primary Key as is commonly used in SQL Server.

I am about to set sail on a new venture with my next official whistle stop. This year has been plenty full of whistle stops and I plan on continuing. You can read (in full) about previous whistle stops and why they are called whistle stops here.

Suffice it to say at this point that it all started with a comment about a sailing train a few months back.

Time to sink or sail, so to speak. SQL Saturday 277 in Richmond will mark the second attempt at what I hope to be a repeat performance – many times. I will be tag-teaming with Wayne Sheffield in our first all day pre-con event. The session is one of three all day sessions for the event in Richmond VA.

If you are a DBA or a database developer, this session is for you. If you are managing a database and are experiencing performance issues, this session is a must. We will chat with attendees about a horde of performance killers and other critical issues we have seen in our years working with SQL Server. In short, some of these issues are pure murder on your database, DBA, developer and team in general. We will work through many of these things and show some methods to achieve a higher state of database Zen.

Description

Join Microsoft Certified Masters, Wayne Sheffield and Jason Brimhall, as they examine numerous crazy implementations they have seen over the years, and how these implementations can be murder on SQL Server. No topic is off limits as they cover the effects of these crazy implementations from performance to security, and how the “Default Blame Acceptors” (DBAs) can use alternatives to keep the developers, DBAs, bosses and even the end-users happy.

Presented by:

Wayne Sheffield, a Microsoft Certified Master in SQL Server, started working with xBase databases in the late 80’s. With over 20 years in IT, he has worked with SQL Server (since 6.5 in the late 90’s) in various dev/admin roles, with an emphasis in performance tuning. He is the author of several articles atwww.sqlservercentral.com, a co-author of SQL Server 2012 T-SQL Recipes, and enjoys sharing his knowledge by presenting at SQL PASS events and blogging at http://blog.waynesheffield.com/wayne

Jason Brimhall has 10+ yrs experience and has worked with SQL Server from 6.5 through SQL 2012. He has experience in performance tuning, high transaction environments, as well as large environments. Jason also has 18 years experience in IT working with the hardware, OS, network and even the plunger (ask him sometime about that). He is currently a Consultant and a Microsoft Certified Master(MCM). Jason is the VP of the Las Vegas User Group (SSSOLV).

Course Objectives

Recognize practices that are performance pitfalls

Learn how to Remedy the performance pitfalls

Recognize practices that are security pitfalls

Learn how to Remedy the security pitfalls

Demos Demos Demos – scripts to demonstrate pitfalls and their remedies will be provided

Have fun and discuss

We might blow up a database

There will be a nice mix of real world examples and some painfully contrived examples. All will have a good and useful point.

If you will be in the area, and you are looking for high quality content with a good mix of enjoyment, come and join us. You can find registration information and event details at the Richmond SQL site – here. There are only 30 seats available for this murder mystery theater. Reserve yours now.

The cost for the class is $99 if you register by February 20th, when they raise to $125. When you register, be sure to choose Wayne’s class.

Wait, there’s more…

Not only will I be in Richmond for the Precon, I will also be presenting as a part of the SQLSaturday event on Mar 22 2014 (the day after the precon which is Mar 21, 2014). I have the distinct pleasure of presenting a really fun topic. My session on table compression was selected for the main event. So, if you can’t make it out for the precon, at least come out for the main event.

You can see more details about the topics lined up for this event – here.

Shameless plug time

I present regularly at SQL Saturdays. Wayne also presents regularly at SQL Saturdays. If you are organizing an event and would like to fill some pre-con sessions, please contact either Wayne, myself or both of us for this session.

Place Your Bets

All bets on the table please. This is the last call for bets, no new bets will be allowed.

This marks the 51st invitation for TSQL Tuesday. This also marks what should have been the month of the first SQL Saturday event in Las Vegas. But the house lost on that event so it was pushed out to April 5th.

With that loss and the subsequent push, it is time for you to put on your Poker Face. This month TSQL Tuesday is taking on a Vegas theme. I want to know about the gambles within your databases or not within your databases that you have seen over the years.

When has somebody (a CTO, Developer, Business User) placed a bet that was far too risky in your opinion? What kinds of gambles have been parlayed into catastrophes that could have been easily avoided? Once you are all in on these dogs and the aggregate limit has been reached, I want to know the handicap and how you fixed it.

Here are some examples.

I encountered a Sharepoint database server that had a 940 GB error log. The log was locked by antivirus software and couldn’t be cycled. Upon getting that resolved, I found the log was growing at about 500 MB an hour. There was a problem with Sharepoint talking to Active Directory.

A developer wrote a cursor that ran for 36 hours. Upon investigation, the cursor was re-written into a set-based script that ran in 42 seconds.

A 3rd party hosting service stopped SQL Server Services and deleted the system databases. The line on this bet was that they would have less than 15 minutes of outage and minimal revenue loss. The reality in this case was a sucker bet. They lost 4hrs of uptime and nearly 2 million dollars for the client.

I will leave it to you to offer up tokes and/or to discuss any trends this may have revealed to you while producing the rundown. Have fun with it and remember, with databases a big bet is not necessarily worth the risk.

What is T-SQL Tuesday?

T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party hosted by a different blogger each month. This blog party was started by Adam Machanic (blog|twitter). You can take part by posting your own participating post that fits the topic of the month and follows the requirements below. Additionally, if you are interested in hosting a future T-SQL Tuesday, contact Adam Machanic on his blog.

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